Amazing how something as simple as a smell can transport you to another time and place. Sandalwood instantly takes me back to India, and this particular vendor in Rishikesh- the sandalwood he was selling was always fragrant, any time of day or night.
Much of what is transitioning in my life right now has its roots in this trip to India. Travel always has the potential to change us. This particular trip and the integration of it helped me drop the expectations I didn’t even know I was holding over myself. Finding myself between the pull of who I thought I was and who I returned being also let me step into the space within and between my seemingly paradoxical desires of home and wandering, of surrendering and deciding.
When we drop the idea of one or the other, when we drop assuming we know who we are or what we should look like... then and only then can we weave our journeys into the ones that are right for us. Because then and only then are we living our way into Being instead of just imagining it.